It has been over a month since my excision. The wound is completely closed up and the infection is completely gone. I’m now in the scar phase. To recap, I had an amelanotic nodular melanoma lesion removed from my knee area. The spot was about the diameter of a pencil eraser, but the excision took a pretty big chunk of skin and tissue to make sure that the margins were clean.
The resulting wound was about 3.5 inches long, roughly 9 cm. Because of the infection, I couldn’t get a sense of how big the actual scar was going to be. Once the infection cleared, my wound finally entered the scar phase.
I’ve been wearing the silicone scar sheets but because my knee is such a flexion point, the sheets don’t always stay on, especially when I do any type of walking. For instance, today I got about a block into my walk to work when I realized that the scar sheets had completely dislodged from my knee and were instead flapping around on the inside of my pants. I’ve been tempted to go buy some Mederma, an ointment that is supposed to help with scar healing. It wouldn’t roll off like the scar sheets…
Here’s a photo for those of you playing along at home…
You can see that it looks much better than the last image I posted. For one, it’s closed up and the stitches are finally all out. It’s still pretty red though. I’m hoping that the color lightens up more as the weeks go on. You can also see the divot where they went down deep to get the margins clear. At some point in the future, I would be happy to donate some fat from my stomach to smooth that out. Not even sure if that’s an option but I’ll keep mentioning it until someone takes me seriously on that…
All in all, it’s still impressive looking – and by that, I mean that people see it and assume that I’ve had some type of knee surgery, not removing a “mole”. Anyone who says skin cancer isn’t a “serious” cancer doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It definitely leaves scars…
However, I can’t help but to think about a friend of mine, suffering through Stage 4 ovarian cancer. She’s going through chemo right now. I’m sure she would probably much prefer to just have surgery and remove the cancer from her. I’m sure she would be fine with a scar, no matter how large, in exchange to be done with her current round with cancer. Am I completely free of cancer? I don’t know. But I know I’m done with cancer on my leg in that exact spot for now…and maybe that’s enough for me right now…